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Comment by ehutch79 | Hacker News Reader

Hasn't threads hit over 100m? Even if 90% just signed up to check it out and never use it again, that's a lot. And it was rushed out because twitter was busy shooting itself in the foot.

I'm not sure how mastodon people are so bullish on it. It's like they never sat a normal person down and asked them to try going from 0 to 'tooting'.

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> It's like they never sat a normal person down and asked them to try going from 0 to 'tooting'.

Why is that relevant? Like I genuinely don't understand this incabability to imagine people just...interacting via a medium, and that it is ok if not everyone is on a single platform. Not everything is about shareholders and creating another megacorp that can ruin my experience as fast as possible.

Sure, some people are not tech literate enough to use a platform like Mastodon, but that is perfectly fine, there are more than enough options for them. Also yes, Mastodon isn't the right platform for people that mainly want to sell you something or 'build their brand', and that is fine too! (certainly a plus for many)

Meanwhile every relevant (as in: information and tweets I actually appreciated, compared to a ton of accounts I followed, but were just rather 'low effort' content I don't exactly miss) account I followed on Twitter is now on Mastodon. So all I need to stay and be happy on Mastodon is for it to not lose those users again, and slow growth is a plus too.

> Why is that relevant?

Because millions of Twitter users are (were?) looking for a replacement and a LOT of people, rightly or wrongly, were selling Mastodon as that replacement.

It's absolutely a replacement for some people. (For me, it's waaay better than Twitter ever was.) But nothing is a replacement for all people.

It's relevant because commenters on here and other places are saying everyone should switch from 'the bird site' to mastodon?

What's not to like about a world where there are a bunch of viable options of different sizes rather than a single eternal September?

It's such a blessing that Twitter and Reddit undid the world where Twitter and Reddit were considered the only choices. They forced out the early adopters of the next generation of social networks.

Who knows where or if Mastodon will fit into that, but what's important is that it's become normalized to try new options. Of course the masses will stay where they are for quite a while, but it wouldn't be good for them all to flood a new service still trying to find its identity.

> What's not to like about a world where there are a bunch of viable options of different sizes rather than a single eternal September?

In essence, we have seen the ghettoization of political organizations when it comes to influence over social media networks. For the previous ~10 years, Twitter was the place everyone of every background roamed and progressives were very successful at leveraging the platform (and influencing the corporation externally and internally) to center their issues and create a false consensus on their positions and to get opposition exiled into ghettos.

They have since been ghettoized themselves as many left Twitter because their rivals have been allowed to participate, pulled from exile and others emboldened. Hence there's this desperate search for "New Twitter" amongst the chattering class. The election cycle is going to heat up in 6 months so it's becoming critical to try and herd normies into a place of their choosing where their media and influences can again dominate. Mastodon was too hard. Threads is a deal with the devil (Meta is evil) but it's the most legit chance to un-ghettoize them and reclaim social media dominance and thus real world influence like they've recently lost.

I think a lot of mastodon users left twitter as part of an existing community, and so the migration process was pretty straightforward; usually they had one community instance that is effectively Threads for them.

I think being bullish on Mastodon in particular is missing the point; a similar comment compared it to saying “Yahoo Mail will be the forever future of electronic messaging!” in the 90s. Of course not; email the protocol was the future, yet yahoo mail chugs along to this day. Likewise ActivityPub (which Threads intends to support) will probably be the future, not any one particular UI implementation in front of it.

The thing that's amazing about ActivityPub is if it becomes large enough to have similar network effects to other social media platforms, it effectively would bring back the ability for people to publish on their own domain without worrying about whether their audience will be able to follow them. In a strange way, ActivityPub feels like it could do what RSS did, only better.

Maybe. Or, maybe it won't. But then again, even if it doesn't take off to the level that people hope, a couple million active is plenty of company still, if it can be sustained.

Some people enjoy the internet of old, where you had to put some effort into finding venues for collaborating. There is nothing wrong with some places prioritizing building communities over algorithmical reach of the larger platforms.

I'm bullish on it because it's not subject to the whims of any one player, and the Fediverse is also not just Mastodon, but also Misskey, Calkey, Akkoma, Lemmy, Bookwyrm, Pixelfed, Peertube and many more, all of which can interoperate. And eventually Threads too if they follow through.

It's a long game of wanting an entirely different model where the threshold to try new things is far lower because you can tap into an existing network from day one.

But Mastodon in itself is valuable to me already today. If it keeps growing, great, but I'll be there even if it doesn't. It's taken over the place from Twitter for me as the one social media site I keep permanently open on a separate virtual desktop. I check Twitter less and less.

Meta/FB wants everyone on the planet to be on Threads (because profit). Mastodon doesn't need everyone to be on it, since it doesn't make money from/off users.

Mastodon isn't for everyone. And that's okay.

This is the answer.

The problem isn't with Mastodon or FB. It's with the organizations that want to build consensus, or rather the illusion of consensus. Twitter was where this was done because everyone was there. It isn't possible if some groups are in one ghetto, others are in another, and so on. They're preaching to the choir at that point and that's no way to influence policy.

Mastodon doesn't need to influence policy.

Why does it need to compete with tech giants for people to be enthusiastic about it? Having an organic community is good for longevity if not massive short term adoption.

Not GP, but the utility of a social app is linked to network effects - i.e. the more people who use it, the more utility it provides. Otherwise you're risking tooting to the wind.

There are diminishing returns at a certain point though, the crowd gets so large that utility stops increasing.

I want to interact with experts in subjects I'm interested in, the occasional media figure, and some brands. Sadly brands are lacking, but I get enough of the rest on Mastodon to keep me happy.

It's a shame Patrick Rothfuss isn't on Mastodon, but John Scalzi is, so that's cool.

The feeling I get from comments on hacker news and such, is that mastodon is a replacement for twitter that _everyone_ should switch to. So you're competing with twitter and any other replacement like threads.

Mastodon is weird in a way I can't quite put my finger on. It doesn't feel clear how it works, what the limitations are, etc. My profile is on sdf.org but it's extremely slow. The recommendations don't seem to work. There is no algorithm to show me miscellaneous content.

I just don't "get it", what it is, what it's for, etc.

I had this feeling quite distinctly when I first used twitter too though

  > The recommendations don't seem to work.
  > There is no algorithm to show me miscellaneous content.

Not sure which recommendations sdf.org has, but imo the lack of an algorithm is a bonus.

My advice to find content is to browse #introductions and find hashtags for topics you're interested in, and then follow those hashtags and browse them for people you find interesting and follow them directly as well.

> imo the lack of an algorithm is a bonus.

For me it's a negative. I want the site to guess what I want to see and give me content accordingly, rather than me having to choose

The idea is that you would subscribe to hashtags to see what people talk about. Or you can go in "Local"/"Federated" and you see what people talk about in your instance or within their network. But it's all chronological, there's indeed no algo to tell you who to follow (Twitter used to be like that, you'd show up to an empty feed basically)

Not sure why it is that slow, might be the server? Mine is quite fast and followed the WWDC keynote in real time with sometimes dozens of toots a minute

Follow #hashtags that you are interested in to get a broad slice of miscellaneous content, and also check the "trending locally" page from time to time (showing posts that are popular on your instance).

#bookstodon #rust #programming #go are some good ones. #maths is excellent (but I'm in maths grad school). There's a growing number of sharp wits and interesting bots to follow. For sure the content exceed my time budget for entertaining social media. I haven't tried getting targeted answers by asking Mastodon, so I can't comment about that.

I'm a "normal person" who's never created a mastodon account, and just tried this. The original article (a "toot") has a "sign up now" button in the side pane, which I clicked, entered a username and email address and pressed submit. I immediately received an email with a confirmation link, which I clicked. Now I can toot.

Somehow I doubt your level of technology literacy is the same as the average twitter/threads user. (You'd have more tech literacy) Just being on hacker news is a bit of a filter.

There's nothing to be "bullish" about, it's not a startup trying to become a unicorn at some future point. It's useful to me right now, because there are more than enough people to have interesting discussions, news articles, and photos.

Clicking one button != signing up.

It's not one button, they had to download an app and then auth via instagram.

I don't see how it is different from any other service where you can sign in with google/facebook/etc.

So two buttons?

> I don't see how it is different from any other service where you can sign in with google/facebook/etc.

It was an account merge. You cannot delete your threads “PROFILE” without deleting your instagram.

There is no other service which utilizes google/Facebook/etc to login that when I cancel my account on that platform I lose my google/Facebook/etc account.

From the TOS “You may deactivate your Threads PROFILE at any time, but your Threads profile can only be deleted by deleting your Instagram ACCOUNT,” (emphasis mine)

Hell even the tos clearly states its not a threads account. It’s a profile based on the instagram account which are irrevocably tied.

But hey, they are working on it. Ya know after all the publicity about shattering “SIGN UP” records.

https://9to5mac.com/2023/07/07/delete-your-threads-account/

Threads can't even calculate active users yet. They launched a week ago.

Sign ups != active users.

Which is why I said 90% probably don't even count.

I wonder how many of those 100m are active users

I think it is safe to assume its over the 2M mastodon users. But if they want to keep em, they need to roll out some features and I want to hear more about the roadmap to federation.

For comparison, the number of Mastodon users (not active) as reported by known instances is more like 13M.

I'm happy for Threads' metrics and hope investors and venture capitalists focus on Threads rather than the rest of the Fediverse.

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